Politics

Meister: The endless censoring of labor

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Dick Meister runs down some important labor stories that the mainstream press has ignored and in effect censored

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.)

Did you know about the Bush administration’s rotten treatment of the air traffic controllers whose work is essential to air safety? That controllers were forced to work long, fatiguing shifts with little time to rest? That many quit because of that? Were you aware of the great potential for serious accidents that posed?

Did you know that President Obama’s appointees to the Federal Aviation Agency stepped in to rescind the onerous conditions imposed by Bush’s FAA appointees and end the controllers’ long struggle for decent treatment?

Well, you wouldn’t know about those vital developments if you relied solely on mainstream media. The Bay Guardian ran my column on the subject, but to most mainstream outlets, certainly including all Bay Area outlets, it was just another labor story to be ignored another labor story to be in effect censored.

New York Times: Censoring Project Censored

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“After 34 years, will the New York Times cover the Project Censored annual release?”

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Peter Phillips, the director of Project Censored at Sonoma State University, sent me this key question with his annual Censored package:

“After 34 years, will the New York Times cover the Project Censored annual release?”

Phillips was referring to the fact that the Times has never written a word about the project, even though it is now a widely respected package, is carried by the Guardian and many alternative papers, and produces a book of censored stories each year.

Moreover, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, which is owned by the Times, didn’t run a story this year even though the project and Sonoma State are in the PD’s circulation area. When the PD did run a story in previous years, it was a nasty whack job.

The “censoring” of Project Censored by the Times, which declares itself the world’s best newspaper, has always fascinated me. And so I set out two years ago to see if I could get an explanation from the Times and its sister paper. I asked Carl Jensen, the founder of the project, and Phillips if they had ever gotten an explanation from the Times why why the paper “censored” Project Censored. They said they never got an explanation.
So I went to work on my own and emailed the package several times to the editors at the Times and the PD.
No reply from either the Times of the PD. Nothing. They were even “censoring” the messenger who was asking the questions.

I noted in Sunday’s New York Times (10/4/09) that the new public editor, Clark Hoyt, was dealing with a tricky subject for the Times, namely that it was missing some juicy stories. Hoyt mentioned the Acorn story
and said that “the story caught fire on Fox News from conservative blogs, but the Times was slow to respond.”
He wrote that Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, and Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news,
said they would assign an editor (B3: unnamed, alas) to “monitor opinion media from now on and to briefs them frequently.”

Clark added that “it seems self-evident to me that the Times needs to be aware of the buzz out there–whether it’s about politics and public policy or fashion. The hard part is is deciding what merits coverage. When the Times misses or is slow on a story that is boiling elsewhere…it lets it’s readers down.”

Well, Project Censored each year for 34 years has produced a list of major stories that the Times and the mainstream media have missed or under-reported. Why doesn’t that merit coverage? Why can’t the Times explain why it “censored” the censored story? To me, the fact that the Times won’t run the story or explain why dramatizes the point of the project in 96 point Tempo Bold.

In any event, I’m going to email the story to the Times and its sister paper near Sonoma State and see if I can get an explanation this time around. I’ll keep you posted. Stay alert. B3

Click here to read Guardian reporter Rebecca Bowe’s story, Project Censored: The top 10 stories not brought to you by mainstream news media in 2008 and 2009.

Click here to learn more about Project Censored.

Click here to read the 2007 blog, Censoring the Censored Project: Will the NY Times, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, and the mainstream media censor this year’s Project Censored story?

Meister: Justice at last for air traffic controllers

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Obama’s FAA rescinded the onerous and dangerous work rules imposed by Reagan and Bush appointees and signed a new agreement that went into effect Oct. l.

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV’s Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century)

The long struggle of the nation¹s air traffic controllers for decent treatment appears to be finally over ­­ the struggle that began in 1981, when President Reagan fired 11,000 controllers for striking and which resumed full force during George Bush¹s presidency.

The controllers aren¹t the only ones involved. Millions of airline passengers and employees and many fliers who pilot their own aircraft have faced serious threats to their safety because of what was done by the Bush
appointees who ran the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Higher ground

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arts@sfbg.com

LIT What Susan Sontag wrote about illness in 1978’s Illness as Metaphor and 1989’s AIDS and Its Metaphors holds for disaster as well: all too often, widespread devastation is made to serve moralistic meanings. Perhaps the primary virtue of Rebecca Solnit’s clear-headed new book, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (Viking, 353 pages, $27.95), is that it does not simply swap one interpretation of disaster — as anticonsumerist reckoning, for instance — for another, such as Jerry Falwell-style damnation. Solnit is interested in how people act in the aftermath, for better and for worse.

By tallying stories from a century’s worth of disasters, Solnit mounts a passionate argument that altruism and solidarity are the norm, no matter what the media or authorities might report. Early in A Paradise Built in Hell, she reflects on the unexpected joy found in the wake of the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989: "We don’t even have a language for this emotion in which the wonderful comes wrapped in the terrible, joy in sorrow, courage in fear. We cannot welcome disaster, but we can value the responses, both practical and psychological."

Solnit collects evidence of commonplace resilience from bottom-up accounts of earthquakes in San Francisco and Mexico City, the London Blitz, 9/11, Katrina, and the Halifax Explosion of 1917. She marshals these anecdotes against the Hobbesian view, often taken by those in power, that ordinary people will backslide into chaotic violence without strict social controls. A ruling class’s authority is disrupted in disaster, and this tends to put them in a preemptive, paranoid mood. The helpful term for this displacement is "elite panic." The predictability of warrantless crackdowns is depressing. In Solnit’s history, we see Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco ("These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will") echoing the brutal edict issued by San Francisco’s mayor, Eugene Schmitz, in 1906 ("The Federal Troops, the members of the Regular Police Force, and all Special Police Officers have been authorized by me to KILL any and all persons engaged in looting"). People matter more than property, except when they don’t.

It’s to Solnit’s credit as a journalist that she departs from her script in New Orleans for a harrowing account (with an assist from former Guardian reporter A.C. Thompson) of the murder of several black men by heavily armed white vigilante groups. One wonders, however, if these ragtag brigades—which certainly cannot be called "elite" — aren’t filling a similar vacuum, in their way, as the informal groups that set to feeding the hungry. How does Solnit’s goodness match up with the mass-complicity required of genocide? It’s telling, after all, that Jan T. Gross’ 2001 book about a massacre of Jews in World War II was titled Neighbors.

A Paradise Built in Hell is a little didactic and a lot repetitious in the typical nonfiction style, and for someone obviously concerned with the impact of words, Solnit never really explains the Christian tuning of her title. But these are only chinks in the book’s broad spirit of inquiry. Solnit’s sources include Carnival, Russian anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin, the reactionary politics of disaster movies like Dante’s Peak (1997), and William James, who was visiting Stanford during the ’06 quake. Her most intriguing proposition is that the civic temper — James’ phrase — loosed by disaster represents a kind of desire. We’re so used to thinking of desires, both as they’re expressed and repressed, as a private matter of sexuality and identity that it’s almost shocking to hear the word in this social context.

One can easily think of Solnit’s look at hope regained as a kind of parable of the Bush-Obama transition, but if A Paradise Built in Hell is a product of its time, it’s not because it channels our new president’s good tidings. Instead, Solnit’s work is best read as a sustained critique of the degraded view of ordinary citizens taken by the Bush administration: in its eyes we were craven, greedy, vindictive, and worse. Solnit says no, not when it counts. It takes real imagination to answer the intellectual crisis provoked by the reign of W with a study in altruism. What’s even more surprising, she succeeds.

Censored!

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news@sfbg.com

Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored for 13 years, says he’s finished with reform. It’s impossible, he said in a recent interview, to try to get major news media outlets to deliver relevant news stories that serve to strengthen democracy.

"I really think we’re beyond reforming corporate media," said Phillips, a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored. "We’re not going to break up these huge conglomerates. We’re just going to make them irrelevant."

Every year since 1976, Project Censored has spotlighted the 25 most significant news stories that were largely ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream press. Now the group is expanding its mission — to promote alternative news sources. But it continues to report the biggest national and international stories that the major media ignored.

The term "censored" doesn’t mean some government agent stood over newsrooms with a rubber stamp and forbid the publication of the news, or even that the information was completely out of the public eye. The stories Project Censored highlights may have run in one or two news outlets, but didn’t get the type of attention they deserved.

The project staff begins by sifting through hundreds of stories nominated by individuals at Sonoma State, where the project is based, as well as 30 affiliated universities all over the country.

Articles are verified, fact-checked, and selected by a team of students, faculty, and evaluators from the wider community, then sent to a panel of national judges to be ranked. The end product is a book, co-edited this year by Phillips and associate director Mickey Huff, that summarizes the top stories, provides in-depth media analysis, and includes resources for readers who are hungry for more substantive reporting.

Project Censored doesn’t just expose gaping holes in the news brought to you by the likes of Fox, CNN, or USA Today — it also shines a light on less prominent but more incisive alternative-media sources serving up in-depth investigations and watchdog reports.

Phillips is stepping down this year as director of Project Censored and turning his attention to a new endeavor called Media Freedom International. The organization will tap academic affiliates from around the world to verify the content put out by independent news outlets as a way to facilitate trust in these lesser-known sources. "The biggest question I got asked for 13 years was, who do you trust?" he explained. "So we’ve really made an effort in the last three years to try to address that question, in a very open way, in a very honest way, and say, these are [the sources] who we can trust."

Benjamin Frymer, a sociology professor at Sonoma State who is stepping into the role of Project Censored director, says he believes the time is ripe for this kind of push. "The actual amount of time people spend reading online is increasing," Frymer pointed out. "It’s not as if people are just cynically rejecting media — they’re reaching out for alternative sources. Project Censored wants to get involved in making those sources visible."

The Project Censored book this year uses the term "truth emergency."

"We call it an emergency because it’s a democratic emergency," Huff asserted. In this media climate, "we’re awash in a sea of information," he said. "But we have a paucity of understanding about what the truth is."

The top 25 Project Censored stories of 2008-09 highlight the same theme that Phillips and Huff say has triggered the downslide of mainstream media: the overwhelming influence of powerful, profit-driven interests. The No. 1 story details the financial sector’s hefty campaign contributions to key members of Congress leading up to the financial crisis, which coincided with a weakening of federal banking regulations. Another story points out that in even in the financial tumult following the economic downturn, special interests spent more money on Washington lobbyists than ever before.

Here’s this year’s list.

1. CONGRESS SELLS OUT TO WALL STREET


The total tab for the Wall Street bailout, including money spent and promised by the U.S. government, works out to an estimated $42,000 for every man, woman, and child, according to American Casino, a documentary about sub prime lending and the financial meltdown. The predatory lending free-for-all, the emergency pumping of taxpayer dollars to prop up mega banks, and the lavish bonuses handed out to Wall Street executives in the aftermath are all issues that have dominated news headlines.

But another twist in the story received scant attention from the mainstream news media: the unsettling combination of lax oversight from national politicians with high-dollar campaign contributions from financial players.

"The worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état," Matt Taibbi wrote in "The Big Takeover," a March 2009 Rolling Stone article. "They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders who used money to control elections, buy influence, and systematically weaken financial regulations."

In the 10-year period beginning in 1998, the financial sector spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions, and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists. Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates, and the Republican and Democratic parties.

Wall Street’s spending spree on political contributions coincided with a weakening of federal banking regulations, which in turn created a recipe for the astronomical financial disaster that sent the global economy reeling.

Sources: "Lax Oversight? Maybe $64 Million to DC Pols Explains It," Greg Gordon, Truthout.org and McClatchey Newspapers, October 2, 2008; "Congressmen Hear from TARP Recipients Who Funded Their Campaigns," Lindsay Renick Mayer, Capitol Eye, February 10, 2009; "The Big Takeover," Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, March 2009.

2. DE FACTO SEGREGATION DEEPENING IN PUBLIC EDUCATION


Latinos and African Americans attend more segregated public schools today than they have for four decades, Professor Gary Orfield notes in "Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge," a study conducted by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project. Orfield’s report used federal data to highlight deepening segregation in public education by race and poverty.

About 44 percent of students in the nation’s public school system are people of color, and this group will soon make up the majority of the population in the U.S. Yet this racial diversity often isn’t reflected from school to school. Instead, two out of every five African American and Latino youths attend schools Orfield characterizes as "intensely segregated," composed of 90 percent to 100 percent people of color.

For Latinos, the trend reflects growing residential segregation. For African Americans, the study attributes a significant part of the reversal to ending desegregation plans in public schools nationwide. Schools segregated by race and poverty tend to have much higher dropout rates, more teacher turnover, and greater exposure to crime and gangs, placing students at a major disadvantage in society. The most severe segregation is in Western states, including California.

Fifty-five years after the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, Orfield wrote, "Segregation is fast spreading into large sectors of suburbia, and there is little or no assistance for communities wishing to resist the pressures of resegregation and ghetto creation in order to build successfully integrated schools and neighborhoods."

Source: "Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge," Gary Orfield, The Civil Rights Project, UCLA, January 2009

3. SOMALI PIRATES: THE UNTOLD STORY


Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa were like gold for mainstream news outlets this past year. Stories describing surprise attacks on shipping vessels, daring rescues, and cadres of ragtag bandits extracting multimillion dollar ransoms were all over the airwaves and front pages.

But even as the pirates’ exploits around the Gulf of Aden captured the world’s attention, little ink was devoted to factors that made the Somalis desperate enough to resort to piracy in the first place: the dumping of nuclear waste and rampant over-fishing their coastal waters.

In the early 1990s, when Somalia’s government collapsed, foreign interests began swooping into unguarded coastal waters to trawl for food — and venturing into unprotected Somali territories to cheaply dispose of nuclear waste. Those activities continued with impunity for years. The ramifications of toxic dumping hit full force with the 2005 tsunami, when leaking barrels were washed ashore, sickening hundreds and causing birth defects in newborn infants. Meanwhile, the uncontrolled fishing harvests damaged the economic livelihoods of Somali fishermen and eroded the country’s supply of a primary food source. That’s when the piracy began.

"Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome?" asked journalist Johann Hari in a Huffington Post article. "We didn’t act on those crimes — but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about ‘evil.’"

Sources: "Toxic waste behind Somali piracy," Najad Abdullahi, Al Jazeera English, Oct. 11, 2008; "You are being lied to about pirates," Johann Hari, The Huffington Post, Jan. 4, 2009; "The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other," Mohamed Abshir Waldo, WardheerNews, Jan. 8, 2009

4. NORTH CAROLINA’S NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE


The Shearon Harris nuclear plant in North Carolina’s Wake County isn’t just a power-generating station. The Progress Energy plant, located in a backwoods area, bears the distinction of housing the largest radioactive-waste storage pools in the country. Spent fuel rods from two other nuclear plants are transported there by rail, then stored beneath circuutf8g cold water to prevent the radioactive waste from heating.

The hidden danger, according to investigative reporter Jeffery St. Clair, is the looming threat of a pool fire. Citing a study by Brookhaven National Laboratory, St. Clair highlighted in Counterpunch the catastrophe that could ensue if a pool were to ignite. A possible 140,000 people could wind up with cancer. Contamination could stretch for thousands of square miles. And damages could reach an estimated $500 billion.

"Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly and catch fire," Robert Alvarez, a former Department of Energy advisor and Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies noted in a study about safety issues surrounding nuclear waste pools. "The fire could well spread to older fuel. The long-term contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than Chernobyl."

Shearon Harris’ track record is pocked with problems requiring temporary shutdowns of the plant and malfunctions of the facility’s emergency-warning system.

When a study was sent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission highlighting the safety risks and recommending technological fixes to address the problem, St. Clair noted, a pro-nuclear commissioner successfully persuaded the agency to dismiss the concerns.

Source: "Pools of Fire," Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch, Aug. 9, 2008

5. U.S. FAILS TO PROTECT CONSUMERS AGAINST TOXICS


Two years ago, the European Union enacted a bold new environmental policy requiring close scrutiny and restriction of toxic chemicals used in everyday products. Invisible perils such as lead in lipstick, endocrine disruptors in baby toys, and mercury in electronics can threaten human health. The European legislation aimed to gradually phase out these toxic materials and replace them with safer alternatives.

The story that has gone unreported by mainstream American news media is how this game-changing legislation might affect the U.S., where chemical corporations use lobbying muscle to ensure comparatively lax oversight of toxic substances. As global markets shift to favor safer consumer products, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is lagging in its own scrutiny of insidious chemicals.

As investigative journalist Mark Schapiro pointed out in Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power, the EPA’s tendency to behave as if it were beholden to big business could backfire in this case, placing U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage because products manufactured here will be regarded with increasing distrust.

Economics aside, the implications of loose restrictions on toxic products are chilling: just one-third of the 267 chemicals on the EU’s watch list have ever been tested by the EPA, and only two are regulated under federal law. Meanwhile, researchers at UC Berkeley estimate that 42 billion pounds of chemicals enter American commerce daily, and only a fraction have undergone risk assessments. When it comes to meeting the safer, more stringent EU standard, the stakes are high — with consequences including economic impacts as well as public health.

Sources: "European Chemical Clampdown Reaches Across Atlantic," David Biello, Scientific American, Sept. 30, 2008; "How Europe’s New Chemical Rules Affect U.S.," Environmental Defense Fund, Sept. 30, 2008; "U.S. Lags Behind Europe in Reguutf8g Toxicity of Everyday Products," Mark Schapiro, Democracy Now! Feb. 24, 2009

6. AS ECONOMY SHRINKS, D.C. LOBBYING GROWS


In 2008, as the economy tumbled and unemployment soared, Washington lobbyists working for special interests were paid $3.2 billion — more than any other year on record. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, special interests spent a collective $32,523 per legislator, per day, for every day Congress was in session.

One event that triggered the lobbying boom, according to CRP director Sheila Krumholz, was the federal bailout — with the federal government ensuring that the lobbyists got a piece of the pie. Ironically, some of the first in line were the same players who helped precipitate the nation’s sharp economic downturn by engaging in high-risk, speculative lending practices.

"Even though some financial, insurance and real estate interests pulled back last year, they still managed to spend more than $450 million as a sector to lobby policymakers," Krumholz noted. "That can buy a lot of influence, and it’s a fraction of what the financial sector is reaping in return through the government’s bailout program."

The list of highest-ranking spenders on Washington lobbying reads like a roster of some of the most powerful interests nationwide. Topping the list was the health sector, which spent $478.5 million lobbying Congress last year. A close runner-up was the finance, insurance, and real-estate sector, spending $453.5 million. Pharmaceutical companies plunked down $230 million; electric utilities spent $156.7 million; and oil and gas companies paid lobbyists $133.2 million.

Source: "Washington Lobbying Grew to $3.2 Billion Last Year, Despite Economy," Center for Responsive Politics, Open Secrets.org

7. OBAMA’S CONTROVERSIAL DEFENSE APPOINTEES


President Barack Obama’s appointments to the Department of Defense have raised serious questions among critics who’ve studied their track records. Although the news media haven’t paid much attention, the defense appointees bring to the administration controversial histories and conflicts of interest due to close ties to defense contractors.

Obama’s decision to retain Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush, marks the first time in history that a president has opted to keep a defense secretary of an outgoing opposing party in power.

Gates, a former CIA director, has faced criticism for allegedly spinning intelligence reports for political means. In Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA, author and former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman described him as "the chief action officer for the Reagan administration’s drive to tailor intelligence reporting to White House political desires." Gates also came under scrutiny for questions surrounding whether he misled Congress during the Iran-contra scandal in the mid-1980s, and was accused of withholding information from intelligence committees when the U.S. provided military aid to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.

Critics are also uneasy about the appointment of Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, who formerly served as a senior vice president at defense giant Raytheon Company and was a registered lobbyist for Raytheon until July 2008. Lynn, who previously served as Pentagon comptroller under the Clinton administration, came under fire during his confirmation hearing for "questionable accounting practices." The Defense Department failed multiple audits under Lynn’s leadership because it was unable to properly account for $3.4 trillion in financial transactions made over the course of several years.

Sources: "The Danger of Keeping Robert Gates," Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, Nov. 13, 2008; "Obama’s Defense Department Appointees- The $3.4 Trillion Question," Andrew Hughes, Global Research, Feb. 13, 2009; "Obama Nominee Admiral Dennis Blair Aided perpetrators of 1999 church Killings in East Timor," Allan Nairn, Democracy Now! Jan. 7, 2009; "Ties to Chevron, Boeing Raise Concern on Possible NSA Pick," Roxana Tiron, The Hill, Nov. 24, 2008


8. BIG BUSINESS CHEATS THE IRS


The Cayman Islands and Bermuda are magnets for Bank of America, Citigroup, American International Group, and 11 other financial giants that were the beneficiaries of the federal government’s 2008 Wall Street bailout. It’s not the balmy weather that inspires some of America’s wealthiest companies to open operations in the Caribbean archipelago: the offshore oases provide safe harbors to stash cash out of the reach of Uncle Sam.

According to a 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office, which was largely ignored by the news media, 83 of the top publicly-held U.S. companies, including some receiving substantial portions of federal bailout dollars, have operations in tax havens that allow them to avoid paying their fair share to the Internal Revenue Service. The report also spotlighted the activities of Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), which has helped wealthy Americans to use tax schemes to cheat the IRS out of billions.

In December 2008, banking giant Goldman Sachs reported its first quarterly loss, and promptly followed up with a statement that its tax rate would drop from 34.1 percent to 1 percent, citing "changes in geographic earnings mix" as the reason. The difference: instead of paying $6 billion in total worldwide taxes as it did in 2007, Goldman Sachs would pay a total of $14 million in 2008. In the same year, it received $10 billion and debt guarantees from the U.S. government.

"The problem is larger than Goldman Sachs," U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who serves on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, told Bloomberg News. "With the right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore."

Sources: "Goldman Sachs’s Tax Rate Drops to 1 percent or $14 Million," Christine Harper, Bloomberg News, Dec. 16, 2008; "Gimme Shelter: Tax Evasion and the Obama Administration," Thomas B. Edsall, The Huffington Post, Feb. 23, 2009

9. U.S. CONNECTED TO WHITE PHOSPHOROUS STRIKES IN GAZA


In mid-January, as part of a military campaign, the Israeli Defense Forces fired several shells that hit the headquarters of a United Nations relief agency in Gaza City, destroying provisions for basic aid like food and medicine.

The shells contained white phosphorous (referred to as "Willy Pete" in military slang), a smoke-producing, spontaneously flammable agent designed to obscure battle territory that also can ignite buildings or cause grotesque burns if it touches the skin.

The attack on the relief-agency headquarters is just one example of a civilian structure that researchers discovered had been hit during the January air strikes. In the aftermath of the attacks, Human Rights Watch volunteers found spent white phosphorous shells on city streets, apartment roofs, residential courtyards, and at a U.N. school in Gaza.

Human Rights Watch says the IDF’s use of white phosphorous violated international law, which prohibits deliberate, indiscriminate, or disproportionate attacks that result in civilian casualties. After gathering evidence such as spent shells, the organization issued a report condemning the repeated firing of white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza as a war crime. Amnesty International, another human rights organization, followed suit by calling upon the United States to suspend military aid to Israel — but to no avail.

The U.S. was a primary source of funding and weaponry for Israel’s military campaign. Washington provided F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles, and a wide array of munitions, including white phosphorus.

Sources: "White Phosphorus Use Evidence of War Crimes Report: Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza," Fred Abrahams, Human Rights Watch, March 25, 2009; "Suspend Military Aid to Israel, Amnesty Urges Obama after Detailing U.S. Weapons Used in Gaza," Rory McCarthy, Guardian/U.K., Feb. 23, 2009; "U.S. Weaponry Facilitates Killings in Gaza," Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service, Jan. 8, 2009; "U.S. military resupplying Israel with ammunition through Greece," Saed Bannoura, International Middle East Media Center News, Jan. 8, 2009.

10. ECUADOR SAYS IT WON’T PAY ILLEGITIMATE DEBT


When President Rafael Correa announced that Ecuador would default on its foreign debt last December, he didn’t say it was because the Latin American country was unable to pay. Rather, he framed it as a moral stand: "As president, I couldn’t allow us to keep paying a debt that was obviously immoral and illegitimate," Correa told an international news agency. The news was mainly reported in financial publications, and the stories tended to quote harsh critics who characterized Correa as an extreme leftist with ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

But there’s much more to the story. The announcement came in the wake of an exhaustive audit of Ecuador’s debt, conducted under Correa’s direction by a newly created debt audit commission. The unprecedented audit documented hundreds of allegations of irregularity and illegality in the decades of debt collection from international lenders. Although Ecuador had made payments exceeding the value of the principal since the time it initially took out loans in the 1970s, its foreign debt had nonetheless swelled to levels three times as high due to extraordinarily high interest rates. With a huge percentage of the country’s financial resources devoted to paying the debt, little was left over to combat poverty in Ecuador.

Correa’s move to stand up against foreign lenders did not go unnoticed by other impoverished, debt-ridden nations, and the decision could set a precedent for developing countries struggling to get out from under massive debt obligation to first-world lenders.

Ecuador eventually agreed to a restructuring of its debt at about 35 cents on the dollar. Nonetheless, the move served to expose deficiencies in the World Bank system, which provides little recourse for countries to resolve disputes over potentially illegitimate debt.

Sources: "As Crisis Mounts, Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate and Illegal," Daniel Denvir, Alternet, November 26, 2008; "Invalid Loans to Ecuador: Who Owes Who," Committee for the Integral Audit of Public Credit, Utube, Fall 2008; "Ecuador’s Debt Default," Neil Watkins and Sarah Anders, Foreign Policy in Focus, Dec. 15, 2008

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OTHER STORIES IN THE TOP 25

11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine

12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief

13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War

14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts

15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco

16. US Repression of Haiti Continues

17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan

18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature

19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor

20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates

21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare

22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team

23. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud

24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion

25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon

Read them all at www.projectcensored.org

How an online newspaper can succeed

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EDITORIAL Dave Iverson, host of KQED’s Friday Forum show, introduced the Sept. 25 program with a pretty obvious comment: "Conversations about the future of journalism, and newspapers in particular, are rarely optimistic affairs." He went on to describe the new effort by Warren Hellman, KQED, and the UC Berkeley journalism school to create a new media outlet in San Francisco (a story that broke first in the Guardian‘s politics blog).

The guests, including Neil Henry, dean of the j-school; Carl Hall, the former San Francisco Chronicle reporter; and Jeff Clarke, president of KQED; talked in vague platitudes about the big new plans — and then spent much of the time defending and lauding the Chronicle, which one guest called "a great paper."

But that’s not how the callers saw it — and not how much of the Bay Area perceives San Francisco’s major daily newspaper. And therein is a critical lesson for the new journalistic effort.

For the record: we would hate to see the San Francisco Chronicle fail. A daily newspaper plays a crucial role in urban life, politics, and society. No number of part-time bloggers and citizen journalists will ever be able to perform the watchdog role of a fully-staffed newspaper.

And we welcome the new effort by Hellman and his crew. With the dramatic decline in the Chron‘s fortunes, there’s less and less coverage of crucial news in the city, and an aggressive new outlet could be very good news for San Francisco.

But the people who manage the new venture need to understand that the problems the Chronicle faces are not entirely due to the economy and changes in the newspaper business. Frankly, the Chron has consistently spurned, ignored, trivialized, and sought to discredit the entire progressive movement and a wide range of progressive issues. It’s been a conservative newspaper in one of the nation’s most liberal cities. It’s been a cautious publication, wary of serious challenges to the city’s power structure. There’s not a single liberal or progressive columnist at the paper. Opinion writers like C.W. Nevius seem to disdain everything about San Francisco and urban life in general. The political coverage tends to treat the left as something to be mocked. There’s no real labor reporting any more, no aggressive consumer reporting, little pursuit of big structural corruption issues.

It’s little wonder then that a significant percentage of San Franciscans (in particular, younger people) see no reason whatsoever to pick up the San Francisco Chronicle. And KQED (which gets big donations from some of the city’s biggest corporations and the social and political elite) is hardly the voice of young, progressive San Francisco. (Pacific Gas and Electric Co., for example, is one of the greatest corporate criminals in San Francisco history — and also a major KQED donor.)

As one local media observer told us, this new Web-based publication "can’t just be about getting the old band back together for another tour."

If a new online city newspaper is going to succeed, it’s going to have to take San Francisco — with all its diverse communities — seriously. It’s going to have to be willing to offend the big-business power structure. It’s going to need a strong, independent, editorial voice that includes, rather than marginalizes, the progressive point of view. And it’s going to have to attract writers who are interested in communicating to a generation that has abandoned the Chron.

That means Hellman and the gang have to hire a respected editor — and vow not to interfere if the stories and editorials don’t support the agendas of the members of the nonprofit board.

The nonprofit model is tricky for newspapers: foundations and big donors have their own interests, and they often want the organizations they bestow their largesse upon to behave in ways that are antithetical to good journalism. If this new group can make it work (and produce a locally- operated product — unlike the Chron, which is owned by Hearst Corporation in New York) we’re all for it. But a new model of journalism in San Francisco will require more than a new publishing technology. That’s going to be the hardest part.

Editorial: How an SF online newspaper can succeed

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No number of part-time bloggers and citizen journalists will ever be able to perform the watchdog role of a fully-staffed newspaper.But the new web-based publication “can’t just be about getting the old band together for another tour.”

EDITORIAL Dave Iverson, host of KQED’s Friday Forum show, introduced the Sept. 25 program with a pretty obvious comment: "Conversations about the future of journalism, and newspapers in particular, are rarely optimistic affairs." He went on to describe the new effort by Warren Hellman, KQED, and the UC Berkeley journalism school to create a new media outlet in San Francisco (a story that broke first in the Guardian‘s politics blog).

The guests, including Neil Henry, dean of the j-school; Carl Hall, the former San Francisco Chronicle reporter; and Jeff Clarke, president of KQED; talked in vague platitudes about the big new plans — and then spent much of the time defending and lauding the Chronicle, which one guest called "a great paper."

Dick Meister: Here come the women!

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Women now hold half the country’s jobs and will hold more than half by year’s end

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, former San Francisco Chronicle labor editor and labor reporter for KQED-TV’s “Newsroom,” has covered labor and politics for a half-century as an author, reporter, editor and commentator.)

Good news for women: Despite the recession – or because of it women workers will very soon outnumber male workers for the first time in U.S. history.

After many, many years of minority status, many years of generally being paid less than men and otherwise treated as second-class workers by male bosses, women now have the numbers to more effectively combat workplace discrimination.

New data from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics show that at mid-year, women held half the country’s jobs and undoubtedly will hold more than half by year’s end.

Prison report: Why guards like violence

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By Tim Redmond


Editors note: Just a Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His dispatches run twice a week.

By Just A Guy

An officer and I had a discussion a couple of weeks ago. I asked him a question; I don’t remember exactly what it was. But what I remember about the conversation is interesting. He told me he hated working here, that this place has the worst morale of all the prisons in California, that the administration has the corrections officers concentrating on all kinds of pettiness in order to keep them occupied — and that there is so little violence and need to watch one another’s back that there is no unity among the COs as there is at prisons with more problems.

To me it’s very discouraging that a lack of violence and other problems endemic to prison life would be a catalyst for enmity between officers, that it would cause a lack of unity and lack of respect among the staff.

I would think it would be the goal of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to create prisons with no violence , no racial divide and prison politics and mechanism that make prison a recidivist machine.

But, as it turns out, a prison with less violence, racial division and those other mechanisms is considered an awful place to work because it creates a divide between the people running the prison.

This, my friends, is irony.

William Safire — an appreciation (of sorts)

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By Tim Redmond

William Safire was wrong about Vietnam. He was wrong about Watergate. He was right about poor Bert Lance, but wrong about Jimmy Carter. He was very, very wrong about Saddam Hussein, 9/11 and the Iraq War. He was, as the Telegraph of London says, “tall, dishevelled, slouching and dour.”

But Lord, what a good writer.

His conservative columns sparkled with style and wit — and often, with intelligence (that factor so utterly missing from the right wing of American politics today). I read him regularly, not just his language columns (which got more dreary as he aged), but his political commentary, which was sharp up until the day he retired from the New York Times op-ed page.

And while he was often horrendously wrong and politically awful, he was pretty consistent. After complaining repeatedly about the climate of secrecy in the Bush Sr. administration, he made it very clear in 1992 that a president who refused to accept sunshine in the White House was unacceptable and that “this lifelong Republican” was going to vote for Bill Clinton.

(He later chided Barbara Streisand for refusing to take his phone calls. “She told me if I voted for Bill Clinton, she’d [grant an interview.} I did; she didn’t.”) And, of course, he famously turned on the Clintons, referring to Hillary as a “congenital liar.”

And unlike a lot of conservatives of his era, he was willing to change with the times. By the late 1990s, he had become pro-choice on abortion, and once commented on a rally to save Roe v. Wade: “Nothing warms the heart of an old conservative as much as seeing thousands of protestors stare decisively at the Supreme Court and demonstrate in support of the status quo.”

Back in 2003, he opened the door to conservatives accepting same-sex marriage (“I’m a ‘libcon.’ To that small slice of the political spectrum called libertarian conservative, personal freedom is central,” and if he were still writing today, I’m pretty sure he’d be out front on that issue (and on allowing gays in the military).

So I’ll miss the crusty old right-winger. He did a lot of damage, and when he first started writing his column in 1973, as a former Nixon speechwriter, he was an apologist for an administration that was pretty much indefensible. But he was thoughtful and somewhat open-minded and sharp and funny and creative. There are no conservative writers who come even close today.

Dick Meister: The steelworkers’ bloody battle

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In September of 1919, angry steelworkers launched one of the most fierce, most bloody, and most important
of the many battles that created the American labor movement

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, former San Francisco Chronicle labor editor and labor reporter for KQED-TV’s “Newsroom,” has covered labor and politics for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author, and commentator.)

It was 90 years ago this month – September of 1919 – that angry steelworkers launched one of the most fierce, most bloody and most important of the many battles that created the American labor movement.

Just 10 months earlier, the United States and its allies had emerged victorious from World War I. The steelworkers whose labor had contributed much to the war effort — and much to their employers’ huge profits – had set out to organize a union, so as to gain some control over their working lives and increase their miserly share of the profits their work brought employers.

Hellman and partners to launch Bay Area newsroom

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By Steven T. Jones
hellman.jpg
Warren Hellman was featured in the Guardian two years ago.

San Francisco financier Warren Hellman – in partnership with KQED, the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, and perhaps even the New York Times – is about to launch a nonprofit, locally focused, online news organization with a medium-sized newsroom of full-time journalists, Hellman has confirmed to the Guardian.

Hellman says he will provide $5 million in seed money for the Bay Area News Project, which is about half the annual budget for a projected staff of about two-dozen journalists, and he expects to get foundation funding and perhaps even government grants for the rest. They are currently interviewing for a managing editor, which they hope to hire in the next month or so, and expect to go live sometime next year.

“We’re forming a new media news center. Basically, it will be a not-for-profit 501c3 that will be source of Bay Area news,” Hellman said. “It will focus on local news events, including politics and the arts, the kind of thing that is just dying at the Chronicle.”

Dick Meister: Obama, labor, and FDR

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Obama is well on his way to becoming the most pro-labor president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, former San Francisco Chronicle labor editor and labor reporter for KQED’s TV’s “Newsroom,” has covered labor and politics for a half-century as a author, reporter, editor, and commentator.)

It¹s clear that Barack Obama is well on the way to becoming the most pro-labor president since Franklin D. Roosevelt – clear that he’s firmly committed to strengthening the vital union rights that FDR secured for U.S.
workers seven decades ago.

Consider Obama’s address to the AFL-CIO’s national convention in Pittsburgh on Sept. 15. Yes, the president was speaking to a friendly audience, saying what the convention delegates wanted him to say and promising them what they wanted him to promise. But his were not empty words.

LAPD says de la Plaza stabbing may be suicide

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Text by Sarah Phelan

hugues11ac.jpg
If de la Plaza really killed himself, how come no one can find the weapon?

I’m still waiting for a copy of this latest report and a call back from SFPD, but the Chronicle is reporting that the LAPD’s review of the 2007 stabbing death of Hugues de la Plaza is leaning towards ruling the case a suicide.

And that’s a verdict that has made de la Plaza’s ex-girlfriend, Melissa Nix, extremely angry.

“It’s very disappointing,” an emotional Nix told me today. ‘It’s a cynical decision that’s meant to silenced critics. How can they explain that a man kills himself when there is no weapon? They should be ashamed of themselves.”

Nix went onto slam the SFPD’s new chief George Gascón .
“This shows that Gascón is not necessarily in favor of cfhange, but of politics as usual,” Nix said. “I think San Francisco should be outraged. And scared. San Francisco can’t be the kind of city where you murder someone and get away with it.”

After a March press conference in which the de la Plaza family announced that French investigators had ruled the stabbing a homicide, and a report from the Office of Citizen Complaints that found that de la Plaza was a low SFPD priority, the SFPD agreed to review the case. And when Gascón took over as SFPD Chief this summer, he called investigators in the LAPD, where he used to work, and asked them to take another look at the case.

But according to the Chronicle, Dr. Venus Azar, the SFPD Medical Examiner in charge of the case, intends to stick by her original finding, namely that the cause of de la Plaza’s death is “undetermined.”

Either way, this case is doubtless going to get people wondering just how many deaths that the SFPD has ruled as suicides or undetermined were actually homicides. And how many murderers wander our streets unchecked.

SF Weekly dredges up the Sixties. Sigh.

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By Tim Redmond

I wasn’t going to say anything about the SF Weekly’s big story on the Weather Underground. I mean, Peter Jamison clearly did a lot of work, it was reported in some detail, and frankly, I’ve over talking about what happened back in 1970.

But it keeps gnawing at me, mostly because I don’t really like this whole idea of dredging up radicals from the past and trying to find ways to put them in jail today. I know, I know, a cop got killed and there’s no statute of limitations for murder, and nobody should ever get away with killing anyone else.

But that was a time when all sorts of people on all sides were doing really fucked-up stuff, from the Vietnam War to COINTELPRO; Geronimo Pratt spent most of his adult life in prison after being framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Fred Hampton was murdered. The list goes on — and none of the perpetrators of the state-backed or state-sanctioned violence have ever paid for their crimes.

You can read a remarkable essay by former Guardian arts editor J.H. Thompkins about it here. His basic take:

The ’60s were full of challenge, and although I’m not a revolutionary now, in my heart, I’m still a revolutionary then. You believed you could change the world and yourself in the process, and that was liberating. The politics were confusing, we made mistakes, and at the end of the day, the fact is that we were right and the other side – racists, politicians, corporate vultures, and the rest – were wrong.

Sometimes I think we should just have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, put it behind us and move on.

Anyway, I asked an old friend of mine who was around in those days what he thought about the Weekly story. He didn’t want his name used, because even now this shit scares people, and the FBI seems happy to be looking for every Sixties radical it can find. But he had some interesting comments:

I’d heard this story was coming out;. it doesn’t seem credible to me. I wasn’t too far away from that scene during those months they refer to — December ’69-March 1970 — and I don’t think BLA and Weather were much connected. Weather types had showed up in disarray after the fucked up “days of rage” thing. And I just don’t think they had the ties — in fact, I’m almost certain they didn’t. even the early weather people weren’t so stupid as to meet a group (BLA) and then pull some horrific job with them. I’d be more inclined to think it was the splinter Panther, BLA-types, even though that trend wasn’t very big in the bay area.

Cops and FBI statements all sound like typical conspiracy things, general and ignorant of any real nuance. And the writer – what was the point of this? – doesn’t dig much up but aging police sources, but does a good job with the incriminating innuendo.

The most credible voice for the cops is Gitlin; because his statement is very true. The group was nearly defunct after days of rage, and the true believers were prone to crazed hyperbole like Bernadine Dohrn’s Manson riff at Flint. It was like that Sociology 101 book “when prophecy fails,” so they were over the top between the fall and when the townhouse exploded. then it changed dramatically.

But I still don’t think that it makes any sense. The Weather people were so naive and so new to it at the end of ’69; I just don’t think they could have – or would have – pulled it off. Plus, and I was closer to the people if not the group as ’70 wore on, I never heard one whiff of gossip about it, and those people loved to tell their stories. What’s more disturbing is the way all this stuff sets precedents, softening up people so that the country is used to finding demon radicals in America again.

I don’t know if Weather Underground was involved in this bombing. I do know that it’s almost impossible at this point to prove it, one way or another. There were too many nutcases doing too much crazy stuff, and all this can possibly lead to is another show trial that seeks to put the Sixties on defense again.

I’m kind of over that, too.

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

Every poor and working class community in San Francisco has learned the hard way that its interests are at the bottom of the list as far as City Hall is concerned. At the top of the list are the banks, real estate interests, and large corporations, who view San Francisco not as a place for people to live and work and raise families, but as a corporate headquarters city and playground for corporate executives. By using their vast financial resources, they have been able to persuade local government officials that office buildings, hotels, and luxury apartments are more important than blue-collar industry, low-cost housing and decent public services and facilities.

Sound familiar?

It’s more than 30 years old.

Back in 1974, more than 50 San Francisco community groups — from Bay Area Gay Liberation to the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center, from the Federation of Ingleside Neigbhors to the San Quentin Six Defense Committee, from the Golden Gate Business and Civic Women’s Association to the Socialist Coalition — started meeting to develop a plan to take back the city.

It culminated with a Community Congress, on June 8, 1975, at Lone Mountain College (now part of the University of San Francisco). More than 1,000 people attended, and they drafted a remarkable 40-page document that outlined an alternative political, economic, social, and environmental agenda for San Francisco. The movement led, among other things, to the advent of district elections of supervisors (a key element in the platform) and the rise of active community-based organizations in this city.

Calvin Welch and Rene Cazenave, the veteran activists who run the San Francisco Information Clearinghouse, were among the organizers. They found the old manifesto recently and sent it out to a few of us by e-mail. I’ve posted it on the Politics blog. It calls for rent control, a sunshine ordinance, a health commission, full-time supervisors (who were to be paid $20,000 a year, the equivalent of $86,000 today), cable-TV coverage of the supervisors meetings, a mandate that developers build affordable housing and a feasibility study on public power. In fact, much of what the left has achieved in San Francisco in the past three decades is outlined in the Community Congress document.

(The congress also called for decriminalization of victimless crimes, including public inebriation, a guaranteed annual income, the abolition of the criminal grand jury, and some other things that didn’t quite come to pass.)

I mention this not only because it’s a fascinating historical document but because Welch and Cazenave think it’s time for a new Community Congress. Their draft agenda refers to a New Deal for San Francisco, and they’re talking about holding a series of meetings culminating in a major session sometime next year.

It’s tough to get the San Francisco left to come together on issues, even harder to build a broad-based organization that can push an agenda. Sup. Chris Daly tried several years ago, but the San Francisco People’s Organization never got the traction many of us had hoped for.

But although the progressives have accomplished a tremendous amount in this city, and have come a long way since 1975, the need is still there.

"San Francisco’s downtown corporate and banking interests and their representatives in city government are attempting at a local level to shift the burden of the current economic and political crisis ever more fully onto the backs of the poor and working people of San Francisco."

That was then. Today, Welch and Cazenave write, "San Francisco stands at a crucial junction brought about by the collapse of the real estate based speculative bubble and the related steep reduction of city revenue resulting in cuts in funding important programs and services … There needs to be a general coming together of community groups to articulate a set of policies able to be implemented at the local level which seek to maximize community control over the provision of critically needed health and human services and beneficial community development and to maintain a vital public sector."

Sounds like a plan. *

Prison report: Playing politics

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By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His reports run twice a week.

“We should not play politics with public safety.” That’s what Assembly member Fiona Ma states as part of her argument against the bill that proposed early releases as part of how California will make up for slashing $1.2 billion from the vast coffers of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Those coffers, incidentally, have more in them than do the coffers for higher education. Oddly, Ma is a Democrat out of San Francisco.

We live in a state that prides itself for its innovation, its technology and its forward thinking. These characteristics have made California great. But I don’t think that innovators and forward thinkers seem to be running the Assembly or Senate.

We are supposed to be progressive, so we decriminalize pot for medical use — but ban gay marriage and pass laws like three strikes?

Forward thinkers, these politicians, so forward that even their hindsight is not 20-20 — because three strikes is what got California into this big prison mess in the first place.

Don’t you remember all those stories about people getting life sentences for stealing bicycles and pizza?
What they really used three strikes (consciously or not) for is to create an industry out of crime and prisons, an industry in which thousands of families now are able to live the American dream and make their very adequate living – and the politicians can create long political lives for themselves by destroying many thousands of other dreams, at the public’s expense.

If public safety were really the number one priority of politicians and those who proclaim it, they would take off their broken glasses and go get a second opinion as to what the results of their pitiful budget and myopic laws are really resulting in: Less public safety in the future.

Amazing that we can see the results of harming the earth through abuse, that we know that if you smoke you’ll probably die, if you beat your kids they will probably beat their kids, etc …. Yet we can’t seem to see that if you spend more on prisons than on higher education, if you take away further money from K-12, from welfare and from health care, that you will be creating more of that, long term, which you say the public needs protection from.
If they were really concerned about your longterm safety, and not their political careers, they would vote for the lesser of two evils — which is to let those people out now that are costing $50,000 a year, and apply those funds to the future of public safety. (I bet if you release 27,000 people and give them each $50,000 a year, not too many will come back!)

Ahh — but what about the redundancies that would be created and the officers that would be laid off because they had to close seven or more prisons? You see the cycle folks, do you? It’s obvious, it’s plain, you can buy it two for one, 24/7/365 at Lenscrafters.

I wonder if Fiona Ma and the others voting against releases up for reelection next year are running on a tough on crime platform.

We should be tough on some crime, but often toughness is predicated on money (Dante Stallworth) and not on the crime.

We are hypocrites, us Californians. We every day we spend more on prisons than college, or have another person do any other day for a victimless crime.

Lastly …. more hypocrisy: Phillip Garrido may not be charged for some of the crimes he committed because the statute of limitations has passed and those crimes will never be prosecuted. But many in prison are doing life, or getting their sentences doubled or tripled, for crimes that happened 10, 20 or even 30 years ago. Why isn’t there a statute of limitations from your past?

Did you ever forgive the high school bully that picked on you because you had four eyes — or are you going to hold that against him forever?

Move on, California. They have corrective surgery now — and maybe that bully is your ophthalmologist.

Fiona Ma votes against prisoner releases

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By Tim Redmond

Only a small handful of Democrats voted against the weak prison-reform bill that narrowly passed the state Assembly Aug. 31. Among those joining the entire GOP caucus: Fiona Ma of San Francisco.

Ma’s always been a bit more conservative than her San Francisco colleagues, but this one is over the top: The bill was already watered down to be so mild that it won’t even come close to making the cuts needed to balance the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation budget. Proposals calling for the early release of old and sick inmates (people very unlikely to re-offend) were stripped from the bill. Any reasonable approach to the prison crisis would include the early release of tens of thousands of inmates who are serving overly lengthy sentences for nonviolent crimes; all of these inmates will be released soon anyway, and the notion that allowing a drug offender to serve three and a half years instead of four will somehow impact public safety is nuts. But that wasn’t even on the table; the final bill was designed not to scare away moderate Democrats.

Nevertheless, Ma voted no.

I couldn’t reach her on the phone and she didn’t respond directly to my email, which is unusual. But I did get a statement from her press spokesperson, Nick Hardeman, which reads as follows:

“While reducing costs is important to fix our budget crisis, we have to be responsible when it comes to public safety. If effective services are not in place as inmates re-enter society these cost savings will be pointless. As we make these reforms, our top priority should be to decrease recidivism rates and give individuals the appropriate tools to become productive members of society. We should not play budget politics with public safety and I would prefer a substantive, open process when making reforms of this magnitude.”

Wait: “We should not play budget politics with public safety?” That sounds like a press release from the police lobbies.

Hacking meters

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news@sfbg.com

Joe Grand and his accomplices, Jacob Appelbaum of Noisebridge and Chris Tarnovsky of Flylogic Engineering, have had their way with San Francisco’s new "smart" parking meters, hacking their way into the systems, exposing how easily they are manipulated, and sharing the entire experience with whoever would listen.

The three men, all highly skilled computer programmers, built a smart card capable of fooling San Francisco’s parking meter system into giving up that sweet parking space for free, and right in front of our eyes. "You can do pretty much anything on the streets. No one in San Francisco cares," Grand, who also goes by Kingpin and is head of Grand Idea Studios, told the Guardian.

The three men shared their account in a PowerPoint presentation at Black Hat Conference, a security conference held in Las Vegas last month. "We found out through the media," said Judson True, spokesperson for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which administers the city’s parking system.

In three days the trio managed to create a device that could infiltrate the meter and then, using an oscilloscope (a device used to translate electronic signals into readable data), they recorded the communication between the meter and card.

Grand was then able to analyze the communication and, by adjusting it, created a new card with a value of $999.99, the highest amount a meter can display.

San Francisco has spent $35 million to deploy 23,000 smart meters throughout the city and the hack was intended to get city officials to improve the system. "San Francisco has been grasping for straws for what to do with metered parking. We wanted to enlighten people to the potential problems," Grand told us.

Since the news about their findings has gone public, Grand has met with SFMTA officials. "They were very responsive, more so than many other security groups. They seemed to be more concerned with vandalism and money being skimmed during collection than with high-tech attack. They wanted to understand the mindset of the people perpetrating these attacks. They were already looking for similar types of fraud."

To defend against fraud, the SFMTA monitors the audit logs of all the meters. If a card has been used more than its possible value (cards are sold in denominations of $20 and $50) then the city can block the card and these crimes are avoided. "We have not found any fraud," says True.

This smart meter technology is used in cities across the country. In Massachusetts, several MIT students were able to find ways to manipulate smart meters in Boston. Two of the three men who found the vulnerabilities in SF’s meters live in the city. "We’re San Francisco residents and we want our money to be used well. We need a secure system that will protect its citizens. A system that is at risk trickles down to the taxpayers."

SFMTA met with J.J. MacKay, the vendor of these meters. "It was the best system for the time and the price," says True. "They are huge improvements over the mechanical machines."

San Francisco is currently planning with MacKay about next-generation meters that will be capable of processing credit cards. "As long as the credit card’s info is processed right away and not stored, then there is no real chance of fraud," Grand said. But plans for purchasing such meters are far in the future, and no decisions have been made about which model will be used.
The plan to replace all the old meters with smart meters by early next year. The smart meters are a key element to the SFMTA’s SF Park pilot program, which uses market pricing and other tools to control parking demand (see "The Politics of Parking" cover package, July 1).
The hackers’ PowerPoint presentation’s "Final Conclusions" offered a couple of hints into their worldview. They began with "Systems need to be fully tested before deployment" and ended with "Consider a world without parking meters. Ride a bicycle!"

Restoring the sanctuary

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MORE AT SFBG
>>San Francisco groups launch campaign for federal immigration reform

sarah@sfbg.com

The week started off in celebratory mood for members of the local immigrant rights community who attended an Aug. 18 rally outside City Hall to support legislation by Sup. David Campos that would extend due process rights to immigrant youth. And it ended, as this issue has a way of triggering, in controversy and division.

"Si se puede," chanted the crowd, hoping that "yes, we can" reform city policies on deporting undocumented young people accused of crimes before their trials. Dozens of immigrant and civil rights leaders representing 70 community groups made powerful speeches, buoyed by the knowledge that seven other supervisors — John Avalos, Chris Daly, Bevan Dufty, Eric Mar, Sophie Maxwell, Ross Mirkarimi, and Board President David Chiu — support the proposal, giving Campos the eight votes needed to override a mayoral veto of his proposed legislation.

Campos, an attorney who came to the United States as an undocumented teenager from Guatemala, told the crowd that he hopes to ensure that undocumented juveniles can only be referred to federal authorities for deportation after a court finds that they have committed a felony.

The Campos proposal, which was introduced during a week-long effort to revive immigration reform efforts at the federal level, seeks to amend a policy shift that the Mayor’s Office rammed through last summer after somebody leaked confidential juvenile criminal records to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Those leaks revealed that city officials had been harboring adolescent crack dealers instead of referring them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation. Within days, Mayor Gavin Newsom — who had just announced his gubernatorial bid — ordered a change in policy.

In the year since that shift took place, city officials have reported an estimated 180 to 190 youths to ICE. But immigrant rights advocates say Newsom has refused to meet with more than 70 local community organizations to hear their concerns about how the change in policy violates due process rights.

"I hope Newsom will look at this proposal and see it for what it is: a balanced and measured process grounded in the values of San Francisco," Campos told his supporters, noting that his proposal does not seek to revert to the city’s original policy, under which no youths were referred to ICE, even when there was misconduct.

Instead, Campos’ proposal seeks to reform the policy that Newsom ordered and the city’s Juvenile Probation Department implemented last July without public debate. As Avalos observed at the Aug. 18 rally, "The policy that was introduced last year only produced a semblance of public safety. It caved in to the politics of intolerance. It was not in line with the city of St. Francis. A veto-proof majority has made sure this legislation passes. Young people deserve better."

But the next day, the mood in the immigrant community soured as they learned that the Mayor’s Office had leaked to the Chronicle a confidential memo from the City Attorney’s Office about the legal vulnerabilities of Campos’ proposed legislation. The paper ran a long, high-profile story on the memo along with critical quotes from Newsom, Police Chief George Gascón, and U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello.

As of press time, the Guardian had not been furnished a copy of the leaked memo. But it reportedly warns that passage of Campos’ legislation could jeopardize the city’s defense against the Bologna family, who claim that the city’s policy allegedly allowed Edwin Ramos, now 22, to kill Tony Bologna and his two sons last year. It also reportedly cautions that the Campos proposal could affect city officials who are being probed by a federal grand jury on whether the city’s previous policy violated federal law.

Missing from the Chronicle‘s coverage was any mention that the Ramos case is stalled, with Ramos claiming that he drove the car but did not fire the fatal rounds in the Bolognas triple slaying, and that the shooter has gone underground and is believed to have fled the country.

Nor did the Chronicle note that a committee vetting potential nominees for U.S. Attorney for Northern California has forwarded three names for Sen. Barbara Boxer to consider — Melinda Haag, Matthew Jacobs, and Kathryn Ruemmler. Russoniello, who launched this grand jury investigation and has been openly hostile to San Francisco’s sanctuary city policies, could soon be replaced.

And the Chronicle only dedicated one sentence to another legal memo — a 20-page brief prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Asian Law Center, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, Legal Services for Children, and the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee. Their memo was prepared to support Campos’ contention that Newsom’s new policy exposes the city to lawsuits, undermines confidence in the police, subverts core progressive values, ignores differences between adults and minors, and violates the city charter.

"In its haste to respond to media stories, the Mayor’s Office and JPD acted precipitously, usurping the role of the Juvenile Probation Commission under the City Charter and failed to abide by the measured approach embodied in the City of Refuge Ordinance," contends the civil rights memo.

The authors of this civil rights memo note that they repeatedly shared their concerns with the Mayor’ Office, JPD, and the City Attorney’s Office about the new policy — which, they observe, "was crafted behind closed doors and hastily adopted in 2008 without a public hearing."

"Yet the Mayor’s Office and JPD have rejected our invitation to work collaboratively with community partners to ensure that the youth are not referred for deportation based on a mere accusation or an unfounded suspicion, and to protect the city from exposure to liability for erroneously referring a youth who is actually documented for deportation," the civil rights memo states.

The civil rights memo recommends that youths not be referred to ICE until five conditions are met: the youth has been charged with a felony; the youth’s felony delinquency petition has been sustained; the youth has undergone immigration legal screening by an immigration attorney; JPD has comprehensive policies to minimize the risk that the youth will be erroneously referred to ICE because of language barriers; and the probation officer makes a recommendation to the court and the court agrees that ICE should be notified.

Reached shortly after the Mayor’s Office leaked the City Attorney’s confidential memo, Campos expressed shock at the manner in which it was released. "It’s an elected official’s obligation to protect the city, and elected officials also have a fiduciary duty," Campos said.

Confident that his legislation is legal, Campos observed that "legal challenges are a reality any time you try to do anything about immigration.

"But it’s interesting that we are talking about fear of being sued, when San Francisco has a long and proud history of facing legal challenges when we believe that we are correct," he added, pointing to the city’s willingness to fight for same-sex marriage, domestic partner benefits, and universal health care.

"The very same people who say that they are afraid of being sued here had no problem defending those issues," Campos said. "Perhaps it is not so popular to defend the right of an undocumented child as those other issues. But that does not negate the fact that we are right on this issue. We should stand up for what is right and we should not be afraid of litigation."

Avalos was equally appalled by this seemingly unethical leak by the Mayor’s Office. "I thought we just had something to celebrate, having a rally to support David Campos’ legislation and now we have memos being leaked," Avalos said. "It’s unfeeling at best. By leaking a confidential memo that contains privileged attorney-client information, you are undermining the city’s legal position on an issue. And obviously you are putting your personal career interests over the city. If the mayor’s political position is more important than the welfare of the city, that’s pretty worrying to the Board of Supervisors."

The City Attorney’s Office responded to the leak by issuing another memo, this time outlining the legal and fiscal perils of leaking attorney-client privileged materials. "Confidential legal advice is not intended to be fodder in political disputes," City Attorney Dennis Herrera stated, noting that he was "not aware of a city official or employee who has acknowledged responsibility for the disclosure."

And, initially, no one in the Mayor’s Office took responsibility for the leak.

"It is my understanding that the Chronicle got it from a confidential source," Newsom Press Secretary Nathan Ballard told the Guardian, claiming that "the Campos bill paints a target on us and puts our entire sanctuary city policy at risk."

But by week’s end, pressure was building on Newsom to reveal whodunit.

"While I welcome the issuance of the City Attorney’s legal guidance reminding the Mayor’s Office and the Board of Supervisors of their obligation to keep attorney-client privileged information confidential, a thorough investigation is needed to hold those responsible accountable," Avalos stated, asking the City Attorney’s Office and the Ethics Commission to get involved.

Shortly after Avalos asked for an investigation, I covered the swearing-in ceremony for Gascón at City Hall, during which Gascón told the assembled that "safety without social justice is not safety."

Struck by the chief’s words, I asked the mayor if he was concerned about the apparent breach of security that occurred in his office when the memo was leaked. Newsom responded angrily, noting that clients, in an attorney-client privilege arrangement, can release memos if they so choose.

"So, you did leak the memo to the Chronicle?" I asked.

"I handed it," Newsom answered, pausing to look at Ballard, "to some of my people." Chronicle reporter Heather Knight was also there and wrote in a story published the next day that Newsom "authorized the leak."

When I asked if leaking the memo was a preemptive strike against the Campos legislation, the mayor went into a rant about how Campos’ proposal could open the city to the threat of lawsuits and the loss of the entire sanctuary ordinance.

But concerns about lawsuits didn’t stop Newsom from pushing for same-sex marriage in 2004. When I asked Newsom to explain this disparity, he dismissed my question and Ballard announced it was time to move along.

Angela Chan, staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, challenged Newsom’s claim that Campos’ legislation puts the city’s entire sanctuary ordinance at risk, telling the Guardian, "It’s a false ultimatum."

LSD as gateway drug

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OPINION I took my first acid trip in 1965 at Tim Leary’s LSD research center in Millbrook, N.Y. He was supposed to be my guide, but he had gone off to India. Ram Dass (then Richard Alpert) was supposed to take his place, but he was involved in preparing to open at the Village Vanguard as a psychedelic comedian-philosopher. So my guide was Michael Hollingshead, the British rascal who had originally turned Leary on.

When I told my mother about taking LSD, she was quite concerned.

"It could lead to marijuana," she warned.

Meanwhile, a whole new generation of pioneers was traveling westward, without killing a single Indian along the way. San Francisco became the focus of this pilgrimage. On Haight Street, runaway youngsters — refugees from their own families — stood outside a special tour bus — guided by a driver "trained in sociological significance."

On the day that LSD became illegal — Oct. 6, 1966 — at precisely two o’clock in the afternoon, a cross-fertilization of mass protest and tribal celebration took place, as several hundred explorers of inner space simultaneously swallowed tabs of acid while the police stood by helplessly. Internal possession wasn’t against the law.

On another occasion, folks from all over the Bay Area were ingesting LSD in preparation for the Acid Test at Longshoreman’s Hall, organized by Ken Kesey and his Band of Merry Pranksters. The ballroom was seething with celebration, thousands of bodies stoned out of their minds, unduutf8g to rock bands amid balloons and streamers and beads, with a thunder machine and strobe lights flashing, so that even the Pinkerton guards were high by contact. Kesey asked me to take the microphone and contribute a running commentary on the scene.

"All I know," I began, "is that if I were a cop and I came in here, I wouldn’t know where to begin…."

My next stop was determined by a press release from the campaign headquarters of Robert Scheer, a Democrat who was running for Congress in Oakland: "Usually informed sources reported today that an outlawed left-wing psychedelic splinter within the Scheer campaign will caucus with Paul Krassner at 2 a.m. Saturday night, at the Jabberwock. These authoritative sources reported that Krassner, who has just returned from Washington, will deliver a preview of the State of the Union Message for 1966."

Although decriminalization of marijuana was one of Scheer’s platform planks, he admitted to the audience that he wouldn’t smoke pot himself as long as it was illegal. I in turn announced that I wouldn’t stop smoking pot until it was legal. The previous year, before I emceed a teach-in at the Berkeley campus, Stew Albert of the Vietnam Day Committee had introduced me to Thai stick, and I became a dedicated toker.

"Now I know why there’s a war going on in Southeast Asia," I observed. "To protect the crops."

That simple quote was enough to land my picture on the cover of the Berkeley Barb, smoking a joint. But my mother was right. LSD did lead to marijuana. *

Paul Krassner was the founder of The Realist (an alternative press prototype), is the author of Who’s to Say What’s Obscene: Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today and In Praise of Indecency: Dispatches From the Valley of Porn, and is a monthly columnist for SF Carnal Nation (sf.carnalnation.com)

Big top blues

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steve@sfbg.com

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus has returned to the Bay Area, this year plagued by even more evidence that circus employees routinely abuse elephants and other animals than existed last year, when we ran our award-winning investigation on the problem (see "Dirty secrets under the big top," Aug. 13, 2008).

As a result, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums has ordered that an animal welfare officer from the city be assigned to monitor the circus’s Aug. 12-16 run at Oakland’s Oracle Auditorium to try to ensure that the animals aren’t mistreated there.

"At this point, the plan is to provide a humane officer from our animal control to monitor the circus," mayor’s spokesperson Paul Rose told the Guardian. Although he hadn’t gotten a response yet from Ringling officials, Rose said Dellums expects the officer to have full access to the circus. "That’s the plan, to be a part of the operations and to provide oversight."

As we reported last year, Ringling Bros. was headed to trial in a landmark civil lawsuit brought by a trio of animal welfare groups and former Ringling elephant trainer Tom Rider alleging the endangered Asian elephants in the circus’s care were routinely beaten with sharp bullhooks and subjected to other forms of abuse, all in violation of the Endangered Species Act and Animal Welfare Act.

After repeated delays, that case finally went to trial in a Washington, D.C. federal court earlier this year, although Judge Emmet Sullivan has yet to issue a verdict. A follow-up hearing was held July 28 and another is set for Sept. 16, after which a ruling could come any time.

"We hope that after that hearing, we’ll have a ruling from him," Tracy Silverman, general counsel with plaintiff group Animal Welfare Institute, told us. They are seeking declaratory relief that would require Ringling to get ESA permits for taking elephants and injunctive relief preventing certain behaviors. "Our lawsuit has precedent-setting potential for all circuses with elephants."

In the meantime, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals last month released video footage from a six-month undercover investigation that showed various Ringling employees repeatedly beating elephants with bullhooks, something circus officials last year told us doesn’t happen. Officials referred to the tools as "guides."

"Clearly it corroborates everything we said in the trial and have been saying for the last decade," Silverman said of the PETA footage, although she said it was too late for the video to directly affect the trial.

PETA activists appealed to officials in Oakland and other host cities to take some preventive action based on the new evidence. After its stint in Oakland, Ringling heads to San Jose’s HP Pavilion for an Aug. 19-23 run.

"The Mayor’s Office met with PETA to discuss their findings, and we’re reviewing that information and determining the best way to proceed," Rose from the Mayor’s Office told us after the Aug. 7 meeting. Later he told us about the assignment of the animal control officer.

PETA’s RaeLeann Smith said that people have been shocked by the video (which we ran July 22 on the Guardian Politics blog) and that activists will be out in force at the circus showing the video to attendees and trying to persuade them not to go in.

"The video speaks for itself. It wasn’t one employee having a bad day. It was numerous employees on different occasions," she told us. "I believe people will shun the circus once they see this footage."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which regulates Ringling’s treatment of animals, also reviewed the PETA footage and announced that the agency "has initiated a thorough investigation into these allegations."

The agency’s July 28 statement also stated: "Our veterinarians and animal care inspectors are deeply committed to making sure that exhibited animals receive appropriate care and exhibitors comply with the [Animal Welfare] Act. Physical punishment, as alleged in this complaint, is inconsistent with the Act’s standards, and is one of the items our inspectors will look into during their investigation."

Ringling officials did not return the Guardian‘s call for comment, but they previously claimed to treat all animals under their care lawfully and well, and they criticize PETA as a radical animal rights group.

Our story from last year also documented the aggressive tactics Ringling officials have used to silence and retaliate against its critics (at one time orchestrated by former top CIA official Clair George), the political and financial connections of Ringling owner Kenneth Feld, lax enforcement efforts by USDA officials, and the pervasiveness of tuberculosis strains in Ringling’s elephants that are transmissible to humans. Earlier this year, "Dirty secrets under the big top" won first place for best business story in the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club’s annual awards.

Although Ringling is a 139-year-old global institution, there is growing concern in the United States and other countries about animal abuse. The government of Bolivia this month banned the use of all animals in circuses following media reports of animal abuse.

As Silverman said, "The trend is toward better treatment for animals."

Split decisions

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Sexo y Violencia. It’s a fitting tag for the L.A.-born spectacle known as Lucha VaVoom. Combining the traditional Mexican art form of lucha libre with a titilutf8g burlesque show, this unique blend of entertainment has definitely found its niche audience.

The marriage of sex and violence (in varying degrees) has always found its way into the squared-circle’s storyline, whether it be Hulk Hogan’s alleged lusting after Miss Elizabeth in the 1980s, or the more suggestive eye candy that the WWF/E (World Wrestling Federation and World Wrestling Entertainment) began parading around when the "Divas Campaign" kicked off in the 1990s.

Pro wrestling has always found a way to reflect mainstream and pop culture, even if its fans are considered to be on the fringe of society. The sport’s two major peaks in late 20th century popularity are defined and clear-cut. In the 1980s, rock ‘n roll, notions of good vs. evil, and the onslaught of mass consumerism ushered in the era of Hulkamania. In the 1990s, as the lines that defined heroes became more blurry and edginess and exaggerated sexuality took hold, cable television’s Monday Night Wars and Austin 3:16 catered to the era of the intelligent fan.

Jan. 20, 1984: during the height of the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State Charles Shultz designates Iran as a sponsor of international terrorism. Three days later, Hulk Hogan beats the Iron Sheik in Madison Square Garden to claim his first WWF world title. This was no coincidence. In fact it was destiny.

Vince McMahon, arguably wrestling’s most savvy promoter, had been aggressively buying out smaller independent and regional promotions, building the monster that would become the WWF/E. With his tanned Venice Beach body-builder’s physique and peroxide blond locks (and presumably with steroids coursing through his veins), Hogan was touted as the all-American hero. It totally made sense to play up current events by having the Sheik, with his curl-toed boots (somehow implying that he’s Arab or evil) drop the title to Hogan, a symbol of our patriotic righteousness.

By no means was this a new formula. But never before had pro wrestling marketed it so successfully. The battle lines were drawn, and much like in neoconservative propaganda, any Russian or Arab in wrestling was clearly the bad guy.

In the 1980s, wrestling had a facade of innocence — the fans knew whom to root for, despite darker dealings behind the scenes with the steroid scandal about to explode. But fast-forward to wrestling’s peak years in the 1990s, and things didn’t exactly read as "family entertainment" anymore.

Midway into the ’90s, the Monday Night Wars were in full swing. WCW (World Championship Wrestling), a rival promotion, had begun to give Vince McMahon a run for his money. WWE’s Raw and WCW’s Nitro were consistently cable’s two top-rated shows, and they played off each other competitively, giving way to a more adult product. Wrestling had become cool again. Storylines became intricate and good guys played bad.

During the Clinton era, Hogan’s real American image wasn’t cutting it anymore. Wrestlers jumped ship between promotions in dramatic fashion, depending on where the better deal was or simply because they’d burned a bridge. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin’s beer-drinking common man persona as the quintessential badass provided an opportunity for universal identification with someone who rails against authority, gives his boss the middle finger, and basically lives the dream by kicking ass and taking names.

Wrestling’s popularity comes in waves, and like politics, it vacillates between conservatism and unbridled, graphic mayhem. At the moment, McMahon’s WWE is experiencing a "family entertainment" renaissance — he’s trying to steer away from blood and sexual innuendo, keeping things PG. It might not have the same type of exposure as the big leagues, but Lucha VaVoom keeps wrestling’s sex and violence solidly intact. No heroes necessary.

The ring

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

COVER STORY Going to the DNA Lounge during the middle of the day is a strange proposition. But on a Saturday afternoon in late June, the San Francisco bar is filled with a hundred or so people, including, strangely enough, Kris Kristofferson, whose son Jody is trying out a different kind of public career. There’s a smattering of people hanging out on the balcony level, but most of us are pressed against metal guard rails that surround a ring set up in the center of the dance floor. Professional wrestling has, ahem, put a stranglehold on venue, and it’s the middle of the show.

A newcomer with a spiny bi-hawk and spiked shoulder pad named Nate Graves — a muscle-bound cross between a Mad Max 2: Road Warrior extra and the guy from Prodigy — is set to fight "the Mexican Werewolf," El Chupacabra, a local favorite who wrestles in multicolored face paint and prosthetic fangs. Even when entering the ring, both wrestlers’ movements tell a story; the newcomer is stiff and deliberate, a menacing behemoth, while the significantly smaller El Chupacabra darts around in unpredictable bursts.

The bell rings, and the two exchange some preliminary holds and throws before drubbing one another with loud, theatrical strikes. I’m sandwiched between a stylish young woman in her early 20s, noticeably buzzed, and an average looking dude in a Giants shirt. They spend most of the fight leaning over me to hassle each other. The young woman really has it out for Chupy. As the newcomer hoists our protagonist into the air, she screams for the larger man to "drop him on his fucking head."

Wrestling’s harshest critics tend to view it as a theater of violent, regressive, antisocial posturing. But a decidedly gleeful atmosphere permeates the venue. El Chupacabra wriggles out of the precarious position, and the two adversaries call for an impromptu toast in the spirit of the nameless unifying energy that takes hold during a wrestling event.

FOUND IN THE FOG


Fog City Wrestling is a year-old promotion based out of San Francisco. Relatively unknown in the grand scheme of indie wrestling — most of the larger promotions are based on the East Coast — FCW has nevertheless carved out a comfortable niche in the Bay Area, already home to several smaller federations. The promotion may be relatively new, but professional wrestling in San Francisco has a lengthy — if often ignored — history. Fans who grew up in the era of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) CEO Vince McMahon Jr.’s homogenized "sports entertainment" empire may be surprised to learn that Northern California as a whole was once home to one of the hottest wrestling promotions in the country.

Throughout the pre-WWE (then the World Wide Wrestling Federation) 1960s and 1970s, promoter Roy Shire’s Big Time Wrestling, a Bay Area extension of the once powerful National Wrestling Alliance, regularly showcased some of wrestling’s big-name stars and future legends, such as local hero Pat Patterson, Superstar Billy Graham, and Rocky Johnson, whose son Dwayne briefly dabbled in the sport of kings as The Rock. Though Shire’s mini-empire extended all the way to Sacramento, the Bay Area was the promotion’s home base. Selling out the Cow Palace on a regular basis, Big Time Wrestling exemplified a halcyon period when pro wrestling was vibrant, gritty, and regional.

Big Time Wrestling owed part of its success to the territorial wrestling industry it existed in, a system where local feds dominated the markets of their particular region. In contrast to the major performers of today, most wrestlers weren’t beholden to a specific promoter, leaving them free to travel the country. But Shire’s own ingenuity was key to his fed’s notoriety.

According to long-time wrestling photographer, columnist, and all-around avid fan Mike Lano, the promoter — a former wrestler — was regarded by his wrestling business contemporaries as a promotional genius. For Shire, personality and a dynamic, athletic wrestling style were paramount. "[He] demanded excellence from his wrestlers," Lano says. "Matches had to be excellent or he would yell and chew the guys out." This democratic booking philosophy, which favored talent and originality over marketability, is closer to the indie wrestling scene of today than to the monolithic WWE.

The Bay Area’s diversity played a major role in Shire’s booking strategy. He promoted wrestlers of color as some of Big Time Wrestling’s top stars, a savvy move that allowed the multifaceted Bay Area to see itself represented heroically in the ring. Afa Anoa’i Sr., better known to wrestling fans as Afa the Wild Samoan, followed in the footsteps of his legendary uncle, "High Chief" Peter Maivia (Rocky Johnson’s father-In-law), who commanded a massive Pacific Islander fan base. Though he was a journeyman by nature, returning to the Bay to wrestle for Shire’s promotion was always a special experience for the Wild Samoan. "Because we [had] a lot of my Samoan population there, sometime[s] [the] fans [would] get out of control and a riot [would] break out in the crowd," he remembers via e-mail. "But it was all good."

This story demonstrates a common truth in wrestling: when the drama in the ring speaks to one’s own experiences and sensibilities, the event as a whole is that much more fun and engaging.

THE POLITICS OF WRESTLING


Fog City Wrestling promoter/cofounder Dominick Jerry started out as a Humboldt County concert promoter before relocating to San Francisco with his wife in 2003. Booking FCW’s matches and storylines, he tells me, gives him the opportunity to play around with the politics of mainstream wrestling, a compelling provisional touch I suspect won’t be on WWE’s agenda any time soon.

Mainstream wrestling is often criticized for its socially conservative slant, a turn-off for many fans whose personal beliefs are less "kill the evil foreigner." But Jerry feels that in a town as singular as San Francisco, a promotion needs to cater to local sensibilities to survive. He cites, among other regional overtures, a handful of appearances by Differ’nt Strokes star Todd Bridges (no doubt drawing from his experiences battling the Gooch) as an appeal to ’80s nostalgia.

Jerry is also interested in the reinvention of character types that a small SF-based promotion would allow for, and quite possibly necessitate. "Wrestling is not a sport that’s very sensitive to race," he tells me over the phone. "But at the same time, it plays on race and it knows it. I see that I have a chance to change things and do things a little different."

He expresses pride in a recent storyline that saw a Middle Eastern wrestler named Sheik Khan Abadi become the promotion’s most popular wrestler, genie pants and all. (Abadi recently relocated to Florida. When I interviewed the East Bay-born wrestler, he fondly recalled his experience wrestling in SF: "They cheered me ’cause they thought I wrestled well and [because] I was wrestling for them. That was one of the greatest feelings ever — to be respected for what I do, and not just typecast for being Middle Eastern.")

The opening match on Fog City Wrestling’s Saturday afternoon card sees your standard square-jawed tough guy face up against longtime California indie star Angel the Hardcore Homo. On the one hand, the persona borders on minstrelsy — it’s a sort of hybrid between the implicit button-pushing of Gorgeous George and lucha libre’s rodeo clown-like "exotico" type. But the match itself tells a less straightforward story. Angel is clearly the hero in the contest, reconfiguring some of the mainstream’s predictable gay panic tropes into a slapstick offensive that plays off his opponent’s increasingly comical discomfort. Toward the end of the match, two teenage-looking guys standing across from me start an "Angel" chant.

On the surface, San Francisco doesn’t seem like the kind of community that goes in for (nonironic) professional wrestling. But scanning the crowd, I notice a sizeable number of bohemian types — an Unknown Pleasures shirt even made an appearance a few shows back. Outside the venue, would they readily admit to their fandom, or at least to their interest in wrestling? Perhaps this insecurity is on its way out.

For a true believer, self-consciousness isn’t a problem. Fog City Wrestling’s Jerry doesn’t see indie wrestling strictly as a subculture. "Everybody knows pro wrestling," he gushes. "Everybody might not admit they like pro wrestling, but everybody does. If it’s on TV, as opposed to Regis and Kelly, you’ll probably put on pro wrestling."

WE NOW RETURN TO THE EVENT, ALREADY IN PROGRESS


When I ask wrestleophile Mike Lano what the Bay Area has to offer that is missing from mainstream wrestling today, he responds with a common sentiment. "They [pro wrestling territories] were all unique. The television was unique, the talent was unique. Guys were not reading promos off a teleprompter or being told what to say by script writers." Fans today may not be getting an entirely comparable experience to the glory days — the DNA Lounge is a long way from the Cow Palace, for one thing. But the spirit of originality Lano remembers from the Shire days has carried over, bringing with it the simple pleasure of watching two colorful characters go at it on a Saturday afternoon.

The main event of Fog City Wrestling’s Saturday bill is a slice of unadulterated pro wrestling traditionalism. Dylan Drake is one of FCW’s marquee stars. He’s a dapper-looking guy with floppy brown hair of a non-threatening length. His name is an alliteration, like Clark Kent. His hirsute opponent has the biblically sinister moniker Malachai, and sports an enormous beard — wrestling shorthand for pure evil.

During a main event bout, there’s a feeling of conclusiveness to everything, like the ghost of Howard Cosell is narrating the action in the crowd’s collective mind. Each punch or hold becomes an ultimate moment that all preceding punches and holds of the show have foreshadowed. This is one of the last vestiges of Big Fight atmosphere, the Ali-and-Frazier effect, or, in keeping with the wrestling aesthetic, Rocky Balboa and Thunderlips. Sure enough, ironic detachment and snarky asides die an undistinguished death amidst the consecrated buzz.

Whether or not the majority of the audience are wrestling diehards, prodigal childhood fans, or just looking for an excuse to drink during the middle of the day, some dormant instinct takes hold as the fight commences. In true wrestling fashion, the match ends in a massive donnybrook of interference and conveniently bad refereeing, postponing the inevitable denouement for another month or two. This is pro wrestling, after all. We head home to a Sunday morning coming down.

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